Life of a semi feral equestrian attempting to learn dressage with her Arabians. Humor, science, and doing things in a roundabout way.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Getting My Roll On

For those following or occasionally following my posts, a couple weeks ago, both Squeaky cat and Donni, my older mare were not up to snuff.

Donni sustained a laceration to her leg which was fairly gory and Squeaky was acting quite lethargic and not quite right.

Well the great news is that Squeaky is totally back up to snuff. She's her happy Squeaky self, happily supervising me all day and telling me what a terrible job I do.

Donni's leg seems to slowly be improving. She's been on stall rest for three weeks now and is doing surprisingly well. I do let her out to wander around in the arena while I'm out picking her stall during the day and I turned around while she decided to get her roll on. If you're curious, she's wearing Back on Track boots on front and it's her back right leg that is injured and hidden in this photo. :)

I decided to ride Chili tonight and had her out and tied to the arena wall while I was picking out Donni's stall. Chili had a semi-feral moment where she decided she didn't particularly want to be tied to the wall, especially when Donni went back to her stall.

So it was time to just roll with it. I put Chili's boots on, got her tacked up, and decided since she was feeling very feisty and obnoxious and wanted to just run that she could run on the lunge line. And run. And run a little more. When she wanted to quit, I pushed her a bit more, until she was quite satisfied that a good walk was really what she wanted. We worked on switching directions and transitions for a few more minutes and called that good.

I am not usually an advocate of "running" a horse down, but weather in the Midwest can be unpredictable and the cold can make them a little bit like morons. In this case, I wanted Chili to realize that despite her full-of-beans attitude, she needed to still have manners while I was asking her to do something.

I then rode her for a couple minutes. She was quite well behaved and still had quite a bit of energy. We did a few serpentines, which is a weak point for me. I am so right sided that it takes me a few minutes to sort myself out and serpentines more than point that out, but it's good for me to remember on work on that.

We picked up a clean canter transition both directions and I decided to cool down by dragging around the pool noodle some more. It's good for her to keep working while having a distraction and that noodle is a great one. :)

So in the end, despite my original plans, it's time for me to get my roll on and just roll with new plans as things change.